{"id":21692,"date":"2019-11-10T01:00:36","date_gmt":"2019-11-10T09:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/community.nrs.com\/?p=21692"},"modified":"2019-11-01T17:36:31","modified_gmt":"2019-11-02T00:36:31","slug":"sea-kayaking-fjords-and-battling-carbon-footprint","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/community.nrs.com\/duct-tape\/2019\/11\/10\/sea-kayaking-fjords-and-battling-carbon-footprint\/","title":{"rendered":"Sea Kayaking Fjords and Battling Your Carbon Footprint"},"content":{"rendered":"

My paddle freezes mid-stroke, halted abruptly on its next pull into the frigid North Atlantic as my attention pivots to the source of what sounds like a thunder crack. But there was no lightning, and these clouds scudding low across the sky are not thunderheads.<\/p>\n

A thousand feet away, a massive iceberg rolls in the ocean, set free from its anchor of weight as a behemoth piece of ice cracks off its depths. We turn our tiny fleet of sea kayaks to take the waves from the event head-on. But a few minutes later, only gentle ripples rock our boats, the force dissipated across cold distance.<\/p>\n

We regard the ten-story icebergs all around us with new reverence and not a little bit of trepidation.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Photo: Ralph Lee Hopkins<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As we resume our paddling, our East Greenlandic guide, Julius Nielson, tells us that Sermilik Fjord used to freeze solid in winter with sea ice, making a nearly seamless connection with the tidewater glaciers descending from the ice sheet just across the channel. That ice sheet is the second largest in the world, behind Antarctica, and accounts for the vast majority of the polar ice cap. It\u2019s two miles thick at its center, and stretches 1,500 miles north to south, covering 80% of Greenland.<\/p>\n

But Sermilik no longer freezes in winter, Nielson says. And this summer, scientists have measured unprecedented melt of the ice sheet while watching its center soften to slush in some spots. Most of these icebergs we\u2019re threading through have broken from the Helheim Glacier just north that\u2019s been calving so enormously<\/a>, as well as from its sister the Midgard Glacier that seals off the fjord to the east.<\/p>\n

Neilson tells us about a conversation he had last week with a sailboat captain who\u2019s long been offering tours to this isolated region. The captain believes that in ten years the Midgard will be gone completely and he\u2019ll be able to sail straight through the fjord to the ocean. Nielson thinks it\u2019s more like seven.<\/p>\n